“I’m his mother!” Vanessa says through gritted teeth.
“Miranda is more of a mother to him than you were in six months.” My lip pulls back. “He calls for her in his sleep. Your name has never once left his mouth.”
Her expression tightens. “He’s four years old. He just doesn’t remember me.”
“Exactly, and he never will.”
Her hands curl into fists. The nails are still half extended, partial shift slipping in and out of her control. She tries to force them back and fails.
“You can’t separate a mother from her child.”
“You’re not his mother.” The word leaves me on a low growl. “You just gave birth to him. You don’t know the first thing about being a mother, Vanessa.”
An outraged cry leaves her mouth, and she lunges.
Coach’s voice fills the corridor.
“Enough.”
He steps past me into the space between us. Vanessa has no choice but to stop, and he says calmly, “You will leave this arena now.” His voice holds no heat, and it doesn’t need any. “Youralpha will hear from me this evening. You have struck a member of my pack inside my territory, and that’s a war crime under any reading of the Accord.”
“She is not pack. She is human.”
“She is mine to defend.” Coach doesn’t blink. “She belongs to this pack. If you press it, I am within my rights to execute you where you stand. Your alpha won’t lift a finger to stop me. He can’t.”
Vanessa goes still. Her eyes flick to Coach, then to me, then around the half-circle of teammates behind us, every one of them ready and silent.
Her mouth tightens. She turns on her heel and walks down the corridor, the click of her steps shrinking until they disappear around the far corner.
The corridor exhales.
Brody is already at the bench with Miranda, one big hand under her elbow, his voice gone absurd and soft in his throat. Eric is shouting at someone to bring the medical kit. Samuel has crouched in front of Ethan and put himself at the boy’s eye level.
Miranda looks past all of them at me.
Questions are written on her face, plural, crowding one another for room. I know tonight she will ask them, and tonight I will have to answer.
I take half a step toward her, and then Coach’s hand lands on my arm.
“A word, Wolfe.”
I look at her and at Ethan curled into her side.
“Go,” she says quietly, her voice steadier than it has any right to be. “I’m not going anywhere.”
I let Coach steer me down the corridor.
He stops us at the bend, and his hand stays on my arm.
“There’s no hiding anything from Miranda now. No matter how much she’s tried to turn a blind eye, she’s now been injured by our kind.”
“There are humans who know,” I say carefully. “There are mates, Council-sanctioned humans who chose to enter our world. It isn’t unheard of.”
“It is rare,” Coach replies, his voice level. “And every one of them was approved before they were told.”
“I can marry her.” It comes out before I’ve fully thought it through. “Marriage gives her standing under pack law. She has no family, and Ethan does love her.”
Coach exhales through his nose. “Grayson, do you think I don’t know?”
